Office Transactions in the First Nine Months: Iasi and Timisoara attracted over Two-Thirds of Tenants

City Transactions at Nine Months: Iasi and Timisoara Attracted More Than Two-Thirds of Tenants

• In the first nine months of 2015, transactions were made in major cities in the country, outside Bucharest with a total area of 37,417 sqm, 46% more than in the same period in 2014 (when 25,475 sqm were rented), according to ESOP figures and almost equal to the total in 2014 (37,377 sqm).
• In the top of the big office markets, except for the Capital, on the first place in the first three quarters of 2015 is the city of Iasi, with a total of 14,603 sqm, on the second place Timisoara with 11,658 sqm and on the third place Cluj-Napoca with 4,200 sqm.

The order of the ranking changes periodically in the top three, being closely related to the deliveries of new spaces in the big cities of the respective year. Last year, in the same period (the first three quarters), in the first place was the city of Cluj-Napoca, where a total office area of 14,990 sq m had been traded, while in the town of Iasi were concluded transactions of only 4,100 sq m.

“After the accelerated development in recent years of the office market in Bucharest, we estimate that there will be, in the next 3-4 years, the accelerated expansion of the 3 main university centers in the country: Iasi, Timisoara, Cluj – Napoca, because the demand for workers with higher education is growing and the labor market in Bucharest has become quite competitive so that IT & C, BPO, Share Services companies and companies that develop research and development centers to look for solutions to support the excellent results obtained so far in Romania and the appetite to increase the presence in our country “, says Alexandru Petrescu, Managing Partner ESOP Consulting | CORFAC International.

Among the companies that have rented offices outside Bucharest this year, in-class A buildings, are Xerox (in Iasi), Accenture Services (in Iasi, but also Timisoara), Hella (in Timisoara), Amazon (in Iasi), Bitdefender (Iasi), Unicredit (Iasi) and Ness (Timisoara). Among the office buildings that attracted the tenants’ attention were Palas and Unites Business Center 3 from Iasi, City Business Center, and UPC Open Ville from Timisoara, The Office from Cluj-Napoca.

The number of students in a city, an essential indicator for the office market in the coming years

The pursuit of the workforce with higher education, but at the entry-level, i.e., from the faculty benches, has led to an increasingly fierce struggle for student recruitment, between large outsourcing companies, BPO and IT & C, research and development, etc. Therefore, it is not surprising that the first three cities in the top 3, in terms of the number of students – Cluj Napoca, Timisoara and Iasi are the same as those in the Top 3 office transactions in the country.

“In the future, we believe that developers who want to invest in the office market outside Bucharest will be able to use the number of students in each city, as an important indicator in prioritizing the locations chosen for investments,” adds Alexandru Petrescu, Managing Partner ESOP Consulting l CORFAC International.

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